Ok, the Percona team members provides the best technical blog about MySQL (and more), this year again. Of course, this blog is very useful and interesting, I recommend to read the comments too, they are often very informative.
There is a lot of work behind this blog, so, its popularity is deserved.

But wait, I’m sure these 3 teams (Percona + MariaDB + SkySQL) represents 80% of the whole MySQL DBAs around the world.
So, let me congratulate independent bloggers for their active involvement and for their sincerity.

I really like stackoverflow, not only for my MySQL issues, activity on these forums is impressive!
And I’m not surprised to see Twitter in second position, I’ve already written about how I use Twitter.
My advice about Twitter : choose your friends sparingly (if you would read all the tweets that you receive every day)

I attended the last two editions of Percona Live at London and these events were incredibly good.
I assume that the MySQL Conference was really interesting but too far for poor European guys…

I was at FOSDEM for the first time this year and it was very exciting. I was very glad to see Percona, MariaDB and Oracle together.
If you’ve never been at FOSDEM, I recommend you to join us next year, this is truly a magical event!

Galera Replication was popularized by Percona and MariaDB last year.
But the guys from Codership works on this project over many years. This is a very ambitious project that deserves to be tested.
And it has become easier than ever since Galera was packaged by Percona and MariaDB.

MySQL 5.6 is now GA! It’s time to forget your brand new MySQL 5.5 upgrades…

MariaDB is now part of a foundation that ensures the open source nature of MySQL.
Now, you have to make a choice between MySQL 5.6, Percona server 5.6 (not yet released) and MariaDB 10.
However, I’m still a bit skeptical about the ambiguous Monty’s declarations on the compatibility between MariaDB and the future releases of Oracle MySQL.
But it’s only my opinion and don’t undermine the great job provided by the Monty program team on MariaDB.

Thank you again for your participation, find all the results here.
And I hope to see you in real life this year…

Let me tell you a very touching story about these awards.
As I said in the comments : Sometimes we think about something and the next minute we did it…
And it exactly what happened, I took my inspiration from the TUAW Best Of 2011 (Yes, I’m also an Apple fan boy, sorry :-)), and a few minutes later, MySQL[plus] awards 2011 were live !

I thought I could have 50 voters, perhaps 100 voters, in my wildest dreams…

But more than 300 voters and more than 4000 views later, the reality is there : You are amazing !

But, no, it wasn’t perfect !

Shlomi said “You’ve got yourself into a bottomless pit!”, and it’s true.Ronald said “Your options leave a lot out”, and it’s true.

But I tried to offer this overview of the most used tools with spontaneity, bravery and honesty.
And in my heart, I know you enjoyed it (no ?)

First of all, I wish you a happy new year.
Many things happened last year, it was really exciting to be involved in the MySQL ecosystem.
I hope this enthusiasm will be increased this year, up to you !

To start the year, I propose the MySQL[plus] Awards 2011
It will only take 5 minutes to fill out these polls.
Answer with your heart first and then with your experience with some of these tools or services.

Polls will be closed January 31, so, vote now !
For “other” answers, please, let me a comment with details.

Don’t hesitate to submit proposal for tools or services in the comments.
And, please, share these polls !